The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border eBook

The others agreed eagerly. They were in the act
of leaving the table when Mr. Temple appeared.
They crowded about him with questions.

“Easy, easy there,” he protested.
“I’m hungry as a hunter. Suppose
you boys wait outside for me while I get a bite, and
then I’ll join you.”

When Mr. Temple emerged, he lighted a cigar and leaned
against a pillar. The boys stood about him.
For several moments he was silent, staring out over
the expanse of desert to the hills beyond, all shimmering
beneath the heat of the summer sun.

“It’s a long story,” he began, “but
I’ll simplify it for you. Rollins held
the key to the mystery. He has a family back East,
an invalid wife, a son in college, a daughter just
preparing to enter college. All that takes money,
for doctor bills and school bills and clothes for
the girl. Rollins was a poor man on a salary.

“He needed money and couldn’t see his
way to getting it. Then a minor official of the
Octopus put temptation in his way by making him a
proposition. Mind you, he wasn’t one of
the big men of the Oil Trust. I feel certain
they know nothing about all this.

“This man proposed that Rollins obtain certain
inside information about the independent oil operators
and sell it to him. Rollins wanted to, but couldn’t
get the information. It was too closely guarded
by Mr. Hampton.

“It was then that another temptation came Rollins’s
way.” Mr. Temple paused. “A
weak man seems to carry certain earmarks that draw
scoundrels to him, boys,” he said. “It
was so with Rollins. At this moment a representative
of Calomares, the Mexican landowner who is backing
the northern rebels, sought him out with a proposition
that he betray his employers. The rebels, as
I suspected, wanted to make trouble for President
Obregon, of Mexico, by embroiling him with the United
States. And the way they wanted to set about it
was by raiding the independent oil operators.
They needed a spy at our headquarters, and they proposed
that Rollins should become their man.

“Then Rollins had an inspiration. He told
the Mexicans that if they would help him, he would
aid them. It was agreed. The agent who had
acted for Calomares in the negotiations was this German,
Von Arnheim, an aviator and a German secret agent
in Mexico during the war. He took the man Morales
with him to Mr. Hampton’s Long Island home to
steal the duplicate list of independent leases and
other data which Rollins had learned was kept there.”

“That’s where I came in,” grinned
Bob.

“Yes,” said his father, “and it
was because you foiled them that Rollins came into
possession of Mr. Hampton’s own original copy
of the list and other data. For he stole it from
Mr. Hampton’s effects after Von Arnheim and
Morales had carried him away captive in our airplane.”

“How about this attack on us yesterday?”
asked Jack.

“As you suspected, it was for the purpose of
capturing me, too,” said Mr. Temple. “And
Rollins had let the bandits know when I would arrive.
Remedios was his go-between.”